Building the Environment

“Getting away from it all” rings true today as it did then. The Adirondacks provided for the cabin of the self-sufficient backwoods trapper and the “Great Camp” of a wealthy railroad magnate with nearly countless hotels and boarding houses for others. They all modified their surroundings to particular needs, often to escape the pressures of 19th-century industrialized America. For the burgeoning middle-class tourist, the rough Adirondack wilderness was cherished and compromised. Stoddard must have amusingly appreciated the contrast of manicured croquet courts within wild Adirondack forests.